TheThird
Duma,{1} convened on the basis of the electoral law which was
promulgated by the tsar after the dissolution of the Second Duma on June 3,
1907, opened on November 1, 1907. The old electoral law, issued en
December 11,
1905,{2} was a far cry from universal, direct, and equal suffrage by
secret ballot, and distorted the will of the people, turning the Duma into
an ugly expression of that will—especially after the “interpretation”
of the law given in the second Duma by the Senate, consisting of old civil
servants and justices entirely subservient to the tsarist autocracy. On
June 3, the tsar deprived the workers, peasants and urban poor of the
trifling electoral rights they had enjoyed. In this way, the autocracy
committed another heinous crime against the people by forging popular
representation and handing the Duma over to the landowners and capitalists,
the mainstay of the tsarist autocracy and the age-old oppressors of the
people. That they would dominate the Duma could have been predicted. That
is exactly what happened.

Atpresent, returns are in on the election of 439 members of the
Duma. The eight non-party members aside, the other 431 belong to
four main groups: 1) the largest—the Right wingers,
Black-Hundred deputies, numbering 187; 2) then the
Octobrists{3} and parties close to them, numbering 119;
3) the Cadets and like-minded men, 93; 4) the Left-wingers, 32 (of them, 16
to 18 Social-Democrats).

Everyoneknows who the Black-Hundred men are. It is true that among
their adherents there is a section of ignorant, unclass-conscious workers,
peasants and urban poor, but their governing core consists of feudal-minded
landowners, for whom the preservation of the autocracy is the only
salvation, because it alone can help them to plunder the public till,
receiving grants, loans, good salaries and handouts of every sort; the
autocracy with its police and army alone gives them the possibility of
keeping in bondage the peasantry, which suffers from lack of land and is
fettered with labour services and irredeemable debts and arrears.

TheOctobrists also include landowners, mainly those who engage in
large-scale sales of grain from their estates and require the patronage of
the autocracy to secure lower customs tariffs on their grain abroad, to
keep down the costs of transporting the grain abroad by Russian railroad
and to secure the best possible prices from the treasury when it purchases
the alcohol, which many landowners produce from potatoes and grain at their
distilleries, for the vodka monopoly. But apart from these predatory and
greedy land owners, many of the Octobrists are equally predatory and greedy
capitalist manufacturers, factory-owners and bankers. They, too, are in
need of the government’s patron age to secure high tariffs on foreign
goods, so that Russian goods could be sold at three times their price, to
secure fat contracts from the treasury for the capitalist factories,
etc. They want the police and the army to turn the workers into the same
sort of slaves that the peasants are under the feudal-minded landowners.

Naturally,the Octobrists are very close to the Black Hundred
men. Should the Duma examine government revenue and expenditure—they will
put their heads together to see that the full burden of the taxes falls on
the peasants, the workers and the urban poor, while the revenues go into
the pockets of the capitalists, the landowners and senior civil
servants. Should the question arise of allocating land to the peasants or
improving the condition of the workers—the Black-Hundred men and the
Octobrists will pull together to sell, at a threefold price, only those
lands which they
do not need, stripping the peasants, impoverished as they are, of
everything they have; they will try very hard to fetter the hands and feet
of the workers, who are already hard pressed by the burden of capitalist
exploitation. And, of course, both the Black-Hundred men and the Octobrists
will strain very hard to have the largest possible police and army to
provide protection for their “precious” life and their “sacrosanct”
property: after all, they fear the revolution like the plague, they are
terrified by the prospect of a mighty drive by the workers and peasants
rising to the great struggle for liberty and land. Together the
Octobrists and the Black-Hundred men will constitute a vast majority in the
Third Duma: 306 out of 439 members. This majority can do just what it
wants. It is against the revolution, or, as the more common saying is, it
is counter-revolutionary.

Butthere may be questions on which the Octobrists will differ with the
majority of the Black Hundreds. The latter’s effrontery knows no
bounds. They are sure that the police truncheon, the whip, the machine-gun
and the bayonet alone will put down any revolution, any popular urge for
light and freedom. They would like to rely on the autocracy and do as they
wish with the public revenue, using it for their own benefit, taking over
all the lucrative posts and treating the country as their own estate. The
Octobrists remember that up to now the landowners and the civil servants
have run things in a way that gave them every thing and left hardly enough
for the capitalists. Two plunderers—a Black-Hundred man and an
Octobrist—quarrel over a succulent titbit, over who is to get more. The
Octobrists refuse to let the Black Hundreds have everything or even the
greater share: just recently, the Japanese war gave them an object lesson,
making them realise that the Black Hundreds bungled things in such a way
that they inflicted losses even on themselves, to say nothing of the
capitalists and the merchants. That is why the Octobrists want to take over
some of the power in the state and wish to frame the constitution for their
own benefit and, naturally, not for the benefit of the people. In so doing
the Octobrists want to deceive the people by diverse laws which have the
appearance of introducing reforms and improving things for the state and
the people, but actually serve the
interests of the rich. Like the Black Hundreds, they are of course prepared
to rely on the machine-gun, the bayonet and the whip against the
revolution, but to be on the safe side they want to seal the ayes of the
masses with the aid of fraudulent reforms.

Todo all this, the Octobrists need allies other than the Black
Hundreds. It is true that in these matters as well they hope to detach a
section of the Right Wing from the ultra-Black hundreds of the Union of the
Russian
People,{4} but that is not enough. That is why they have to seek for
other allies who are also hostile to the revolution, but who are enemies of
the Black Hundreds, favour fraudulent or petty reforms, and support the
constitution in the interests of the big and possibly a section of the
middle bourgeoisie.

Itis easy for the Octobrists to find such allies in the Duma:
they are the Cadets, a party of that section of the landowners, the big and
middle bourgeoisie which has quite adapted itself to conducting a really
good Capitalist economy, like that in the West-European countries, and
based likewise on the exploitation and oppression of the workers, the
peasants and the urban poor, but an exploitation which is clever, subtle
and artful, an exploitation you do not see right through all at once. There
are many landowners in the Cadet Party engaged in real capitalist
operations, and similar factory-owners and bankers, many lawyers?
professors and doctors with good incomes, derived from the rich. It is true
that in their programme the Cadets promised the people a great many things:
there was universal suffrage and all the freedoms, an 8–hour working day,
and land for the peasants. But all that was said merely to attract the
masses of people, for they never actually made any straightforward proposal
for universal suffrage even in the first two Dumas; their bills on the
freedoms were in fact aimed at giving the people as little freedom as
possible; in the Second Duma they proposed a 10–hour day instead of the
8–hour day, and they were prepared to let the peasants have land which was
of no use to the capitalist economy, and which carried redemption payments,
and let them have so little of it that even if the peasants got it, they
would still have to work for a wage on the neighbouring
landowners? estates. That was a clever trick to which the workers did not
rise at all, very few peasants did and only some of the urban poor actually
took the Cadets at their word. Today, after the dissolution of the two
Dumas, the Cadets have grown very quiet and are making up to the
Octobrists: they declared that they regard the revolutionaries and
especially the Social-Democrats as their enemies, and, believing the
Octobrists to be constitutional-minded, voted for an Octobrist to fill the
post of Duma Chairman. The deal is ready. It is true that Minister Stolypin
does not apparently want a permanent deal and wants to keep the Cadets in
submission, thereby exerting an influence on the Octobrists, but in
practice there will still be constituted another majority in the Duma—the
Octobrists and the Cadets. Together they number 212, slightly less
than half, but they will also have the non-party men behind them, and these
number 8, so that the majority will be there; and even among the Rightists
some might vote with the Octobrists and the Cadets on some questions. Of
course, this other majority will also be counter-revolutionary and
will fight against the revolution; it will merely covet up with trifling
reforms which are of no use to the people.

Canthese two majorities in the Third Duma defeat the revolution?

Thegreat Russian revolution cannot stop until the peasants receive
land in any appreciable quantity and until the masses of people secure the
main influence on the administration of the state. Can we expect the two
Duma majorities to produce all that? The question is in itself ridiculous:
=
can the feudal-minded landowners and plunderous capitalists be expected to
give land to the peasants and give up the supreme power to the people? No!
They will throw a starving peasant a crust, after stripping him of
everything he has, and they will help only the kulaks and the sharks to
make themselves comfortable, taking all the power for themselves and
leaving the people oppressed and subjugated.

TheSocial-Democrats must naturally do everything they can to continue
the people’s great cause—-the revolution, the struggle for liberty and
land.

Inthe Duma, the government behind the Octobrists, and the Cadets want
to play a double game. The government,
while stepping up its persecutions and putting down Russia with the aid of
bayonet, noose, prison cell and prison camp, pretends to be an advocate of
reform. The Cadets, who have actually embraced the Octobrists, pretend that
they are real champions of liberty. Both want to cheat the people and stamp
out the revolution.

Letus see that this does not happen! The Social-Democrats, consistent
and loyal fighters for nation-wide emancipation, will unmask the hypocrites
and the cheats. Inside and outside the Duma they will expose the tyrannies
of the Black-Hundred landowners and the government, and the Cadet
tricks. They will—they must—understand that there is now need for more
than a relentless struggle against the government; the Cadets must not be
given either direct or indirect support.

TheSocial-Democrats must above all raise their voice to expose most
sternly and relentlessly the foul tsarist crime perpetrated on June 3,
1907. Let the proletariat’s spokesmen in the Duma explain to the people
that the Third Duma cannot serve their interests, that it cannot meet their
demands and that this can be done only by a sovereign constituent assembly
elected through universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot.

Thegovernment will propose new laws. The Octobrists, the Cadets and
the Black Hundreds will do the same. All these laws will be a brazen
swindle of the people, a gross violation of their rights and interests, a
mockery of their demands, a mockery of the blood shed by the people in the
struggle for liberty. All these laws will provide protection for the
interests of the landowners and the capitalists. Each of these laws will be
a fresh link in the chains of bondage which the oppressors and the
parasites want to clamp on the workers, the peasants and the urban
poor. Not everyone will understand this right away. But the
Social-Democrats know and understand this, and that is why they will expose
this boldly before the cheated people. In so doing, they must devote
special attention to the laws which relate to the people’s most vital
needs: the laws on land, the laws on labour, on state revenue and
expenditure. In branding the violence and fraud of the feudal-minded land
owners and the capitalists, the Social-Democrats must
explain their demands to the entire people: full powers for the people (a
democratic republic), unrestricted liberty and equality, the 8-hour working
day and the easing of working conditions for labour, confiscation of large
estates and the handing of land over to the peasants. They must also point
to the great goal which the proletariat of all countries sets
itself—socialism, complete abolition of wage slavery.

Alongsidethe Social-Democrats in the Duma there is a small group of
Left-wingers, mainly the Trudoviks. The Social-Democrats should urge these
men to go along with them. This is especially necessary when there is
occasion to direct questions to the government which is running rampant all
over Russia like a wild beast. Every day, the watch dogs of tsarism—the
police, the gendarmes—and the higher authorities—ministers and
governors—permit themselves gross acts of violence and lawlessness. They
must be ex posed and branded. And it is up to the Social-Democrats to do
this. But a question to the government requires the signatures of 30
members of the Duma, and the Social-Democrats will hardly number more than
18. Together with the other Left-wingers they are 32. The Social-Democrats
must draw up the questions and urge the Left-wingers to join them. If the
Leftists really cherish the great cause of liberty, they must do so. A
heavy blow will then be inflicted on the government, like those the
Social-Democrats inflicted on it with their questions in the Second Duma.

Suchare the main tasks of the Social-Democrats in the Third Duma. Our
comrades have some hard work to do. They will be there among enemies,
malicious and ruthless. Efforts will be made to stop their mouths, and they
will be showered with abuse, they will perhaps be expelled from the Duma,
brought to trial, thrown into prison and exiled. They must be firm, in
spite of all persecutions, they must hold high the proletariat’s red banner
and remain loyal to the end to the great cause of struggle for the people’s
emancipation. And all of us, comrades workers, must join forces in
supporting them; we must lend a sensitive ear to their every word, respond
to it, discuss their acts at meetings and rallies, reinforcing by our
sympathies and approval their every correct step, helping them with all our
strength
and resources in the struggle for the cause of the revolution. Let the
working class be united in supporting its spokesmen, and in so doing may it
strengthen its unity which it needs in the great struggler—the time when
the “last decisive battle” is fought.

Notes

{1}The Third Duma held five sessions from November 1 (14), 1907,
to June 9 (22), 1912. Elected on the basis of the June 3 electoral law the
Third Duma was dominated by the Black Hundreds and the Octobrists, and was
a pliant tool of the tsarist government in its counter-revolutionary policy
of violence and repression against the revolutionary forces of Russia.

TheSocial-Democratic group in the Third Duma, despite the very
difficult conditions, the small size of the group and some initial
mistakes, did a great deal, thanks to the presence of the Bolshevik
deputies, in exposing the anti-popular policy of the Third Duma, and in the
political education of the proletariat and peasantry of Russia, through
speeches in the Duma and work outside it.
p. 209

{2}The Electoral Law of December 11 (24), 1906, on the
convocation of a “legislative” Duma was issued by the tsarist government
at the height of the Moscow armed uprising. It assured the landowners and
capitalists of overriding domination in the Duma. The First Duma, elected
under the law, was a Cadet one.
p. 209

{3}Octobrists—members of the Octobrist Party (or the Union of
October Seventeen) formed in Russia after the issue of the tsar’s manifesto
of October 17 (30), 1905. It was a counter-revolutionary party representing
and fighting for the interests of the big bourgeoisie and landowners
engaged in capitalist operations; it was headed by the well-known Moscow
industrialist and real-estate man A. I. Guchkov and the big landowner
M. V. Rodzyanko. The Octobrists gave full support to the tsarist
government’s domestic and foreign policy.
p. 209

{4}Union of the Russian People—an ultra-reactionary, diehard
organisation of monarchists, formed in St. Petersburg in October 1905 to
fight the revolutionary movement. It had branches in many towns of Russia.

TheUnion wanted to preserve the autocracy, semi-feudal landed estates
and privileges for the gentry. “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, National
Character”, the nationalistic slogan of the serf period, was its programme
slogan. Its chief methods of fighting the revolution were pogroms and
assassinations.

Afterthe dispersal of the Second Duma, the Union broke up into two
organisations: the Chamber of St. Michael the Archangel,
led by Purishkevich, which called for the use of the Third Duma for
counter-revolutionary ends, and the Union of the Russian People itself, led
by Dubrovin, which continued the tactics of open terrorism. Both outfits
were liquidated during the bourgeois-democratic revolution in February
1917. After the October Socialist Revolution, former members of these
outfits took an active part in counter-revolutionary revolts and plots
against the Soviet power.
p. 212